Come for a visit

Taking a tour is the best way to see what life is like in our Avinity senior living communities. Meet the staff. Visit with the residents. Share a cup of coffee. Check out the apartments. Explore the property. Ask questions. Feel the spirit. If you visit in the afternoon, join us for a meal. Our treat. Walk-ins are welcome, but we can guarantee more time with you when you schedule a tour.

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Choose the locations you'd like to visit:

Edendale of Eden Prairie

LEE Center of Hibbing

Mainstreet Village of Richfield

Scandia Shores of Shoreview

WestRidge of Minnetonka

Mainstreet Village Memory Care of Richfield

Mill Pond Gables of Champlin

Northland Village Buhl of Buhl

Northland Village McGregor of McGregor

Northland Village Hoyt Lakes of Hoyt Lakes

Golden Oaks of Proctor of Proctor

Golden Oaks of Hermantown of Hermantown

Havenwood of Richfield of Richfield

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If you see this, ignore it:

MEET REIKO

May 28, 2014

In Tokyo, Japan, on September 17, 1928, Reiko “was born dancing.” She was the daughter of a French mother and Japanese Diplomat. She spent her first three years in Tokyo, then her father returned to his diplomat post in Mexico, where her brother and her sister were born.

When Reiko was young, she would speak Spanish and English at school, but French at home. She grew up loving Mexican culture, but had few friends aside from her family and siblings because of the gated diplomat community.

When she was eight years old her family was recalled to Tokyo because of Japan’s war with China as well as the impending World War. Being French, her mother was not able to return to Japan with them. Reiko was enrolled in Japanese school and immediately felt the foreignness of the Japanese culture. Being fairer of skin and hair color and unable to speak Japanese, she was bullied quite a bit, but learned to fight back. And she did learn the language.

In 1945, the war had escalated to the point where Reiko’s family was forced to evacuate Tokyo. They evacuated to an area near Osaka, where Reiko attended a high school. She and her classmates were put to work in a clothing factory manufacturing garments for the army. One day, Reiko got a terrible pain in her stomach. She went to the infirmary and was told that she had appendicitis and she needed to go to the hospital. The closest one was thirty miles away, and the only transportation was a bicycle-pulled cart.

When she reached the hospital she was told there were no rooms available, so she was placed on a futon in a waiting room. Since there were not enough nurses available, her father hired an elderly woman to provide care for her. Napalm bombs were dropped on the city that evening and Reiko couldn’t stay in the hospital, so the elderly woman wrapped her in a blanket and helped her out into the street. Amidst a “sea of fire” they found shelter under a tree and when the bombing stopped they found their way back to the hospital which was now only partially intact. She stayed there a couple days to recuperate after her surgery and returned to live with her family. She was horrified to learn that the city where she went to school and worked in the clothing factory was destroyed and all the other children had died. If she hadn’t had the appendicitis attack, she would also be dead. She felt this meant she had a special purpose in life.

She remembers being close enough to Hiroshima to see the fire in the sky when the atomic bomb was dropped. She was 15 years old when the war ended.

Later Reiko began college and got a job as an interpreter at a US army base, which gave her special privileges as she was a “foreign national.” In time, Reiko met and married Duane, an American GI.

When Reiko became pregnant, her father encouraged her to study Nihonga (Japanese-style painting), in accordance with the Japanese belief that a child’s learning begins during its time in the womb. She became very accomplished at this.

In 1952 she and Duane decided to move to the United States, to Duane’s home town of New Ulm, Minnesota. When the weather turned cold in late September and Reiko began to take frozen diapers in off the clotheslines, she told Duane that they were not going to stay in Minnesota any longer! They moved to Mexico where her siblings lived.

After Duane finished his degree in Mexico City and Reiko became pregnant again, they moved back to Minnesota and settled in Mankato. She wanted all her children to have US citizenship. Eventually they had five sons. Reiko’s mother joined her husband in Mexico so Reiko was able to see her when she went back for visits.

In 1960 Reiko suffered a bowel obstruction and although she healed, she kept feeling unexplainably “lousy.” In order to regain her health and energy she decided to join a ballet company. With a little persuasion Duane joined his wife on the floor. Eventually all of their sons also danced ballet.

While Duane worked with the Minnesota Orchestra, the family lived on a farm in Elko, Minnesota. This enabled Reiko to get a St. Bernard dog which she always wanted. They added many other animals and kenneled dogs of orchestra members when they traveled.

In 1973, Reiko and Duane started Minnihon Arts Center. They offered Japanese painting and Japanese dance classes. But after Duane developed cancer in 1980 they had to close the arts center. Duane lost his battle with the cancer in 1984.

Life changed tremendously for Reiko after that. She had never worked for pay since marrying Duane. With the help and encouragement of her sons Reiko acquired her first driver’s license at age 55! She then began working for large companies as a liaison for Japanese and American businesses. She hosted various groups of Japanese businessmen when they were in the Twin Cities on business and taught American businessmen proper Japanese behavior and interaction. Reiko was also able to resume teaching Japanese painting and offering dance lessons.

A few years later, she began an exchange program and took a group of her painting students to one of her old schools in Japan. They trained with her old teachers and greatly benefited from the experience.

In 1987 Reiko married again, to Eugene, an old family friend and fellow ballet dancer. While continuing her independent work as a liaison and keeping up her art teaching, she decided to begin teaching her own ballet classes at the Minnetonka Community Center in 1990. The classes became the Développé Dance Group.

In 1992 Reiko received the Asian-Pacific Leadership Award from the State of Minnesota in recognition of her outstanding services in cultural heritage.

In 2012, Eugene was admitted into a special nursing facility for Alzheimer’s care and Reiko discovered she had a large tumor on her kidney. It was successfully removed with surgery and after a short recovery period she went back to teaching her classes. But after suffering a fall, her sons began searching for a place for her to live that would be closer to them. That is how Reiko came to live at Mainstreet Village.

Reiko was recently diagnosed with lung cancer and is taking chemotherapy treatment. She still teaches ballet classes and painting classes a couple times a week, and has recently started teaching a ballet class to the other senior residents living in her community.

Her joy in life is her family. Her five sons visit and call often. She is the proud grandmother of ten grandchildren and three great grandchildren. As she reflects on her life she wants to be remembered as a fair and good teacher. She has dedicated so much of her life to passing on the skills and education she has acquired. She is the first women to have danced Madame Butterfly when it was adapted for the Ballet, and through her time in the Twin Cities she has gotten to see Minneapolis become second to New York in the ballet world. Her classes in the Japanese Arts have proved instrumental in the Japanese-American community.

Through her service to her students and her family, Reiko has already established a legacy.

Excerpted and edited from her life story written by Bethel University students for their aging class project.

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